A Chaldean Catholic archbishop kidnapped last month in northern Iraq has been found dead, the information service of the Italian Catholic Church said Thursday.
The body of Paulos Faraj Rahho, the archbishop of Mosul, was found near the northern city, the Church said, quoting the auxiliary archbishop of Baghdad, Shlemon Warduni.
“We recovered his body near Mosul,” Warduni said, according to the Church’s news agency SIR. “The kidnappers had buried him.”
Rahho was kidnapped on February 29 in Mosul after a deadly shootout in which three of his companions were killed.
Iraqi forces in Mosul had fanned out to search for Rahho, whose abduction was branded as “atrocious” by Pope Benedict XVI.
The Chaldean archbishop of Mosul is dead. Archbishop Faraj Rahho was kidnapped last February 29 after the Stations of the Cross. His kidnappers have given word of his death, indicating to the mediators where they could recover the body of the 67-year-old prelate. “It is a heavy Cross for our Church, ahead of Easter”, Rabban al Qas, bishop of Arbil, tells AsiaNews in response to the news.
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